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The alignments of Erdeven, which succeed those of Carnac, extend for a length of more than a mile and a half. They originally included 1,030 menhirs, of which 288 are still extant. The archaeologists of Brittany, carried away perhaps by their patriotic enthusiasm, claim that when these monuments were intact they included two thousand menhirs.
More than that, Madame de Sevigne, who was stopping at Auray in 1689, and visited its environs, writes to her daughter of all she has seen and done, without alluding to the alignments of Carnac, or of Erdeven, which were, of course, much more complete in her day than in ours.
There are other alignements in Brittany, of which the most important is that of Erdeven, comprising 1129 stones arranged in ten lines. Outside Brittany alignements are unusual, but a fine example, now ruined, is said to have existed at Saint Pantaléon north of Autun. In the fields around it are found large quantities of polished stone axes with knives, scrapers, and arrow-heads of flint.
And the Celtic relics, uncontestably curious for the archaeologist, have naught for the artist, they are badly set, badly composed, Carnac and Erdeven have no physiognomy. In short, Brittany shall not have my bones! I prefer a thousand times your rich Normandy, or, in the days when one has dramas in his HEAD, a real country of horror and despair.
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